I’m also a “Chaplain Mike,” but with the Navy. I’ve often thought about where I’ll be post-Navy (in about 10 years). Hospitial ministry is very appealing to me, especially Hospice. I’m even more interested after reading your interview. Thank you!

There doesn’t seem to be much as far job opening adverts. How are they advertised, typically?
Thanks again!

Earlier this month I lost my mother to suicide after watching her battle with depression for some time. I feel like I have heard every cliche on Mike’s list a dozen times over in the last few weeks.

I grew up in an LCMS Lutheran Church but left it in college for more charismatic/seeker driven churches that at age 18 I found to be more exciting. I’m now 27 and over the last few years I began to notice increasing problems in these churches and my study of scripture began leading my back to my roots. I thank God this happened because I do not know how I would have dealt with my mother’s death if I had not come to a more clear understanding of the objective reality of the Gospel, that can even save a woman so overcome by depression that she would take her own life.

I have to say that what you gentlemen said about having a clear liturgy for such occasions and having a pastor that empathizes and actively listens is so true. My mother’s pastor has been wonderful for my family. I am so glad that when he visited he didn’t speak too much and prayed prayers from his prayerbook that were saturated with scripture and delivered earnestly. I felt that for the first time in a long time I saw a pastor truly at work.

Thanks again for speaking openly and honestly about this subject.

However…let’s not make this too complicated, either. My main criticism of the church with regard to caring for the suffering is that we have bought into our culture of busyness, programmed approaches, and the ethos of productivity, and have forgotten how to be simply human with one another. Crassly put, if you are too busy to love your neighbor, you’re too busy. If we can’t rearrange our schedules to sit with someone who is dying, our schedules are too dear to us.

Well, yes, but yet … my experience is that this type of approach can be exactly the problem.

(First, let me say that, Greg, you know this exact situation and person, and I don’t. If you think that my comment does not apply to your specific situation, you are probably right.)

In my experience, approaching someone in your local congregation is very risky when

-There are no options left except those that will be regretted or can never be proven right or wrong. (e.g. many situations involving treatments that are dangerous and can cause much suffering, or even death, in and of themselves.) Being encouraged to not do something you will regret kind of completely misses the need (the free fall of being forced into thinking about an unthinkable decision) and makes the person feel at risk of being judged no matter what they do.

- You (the primary care taker or decision maker) have utterly no emotional resources left to deal with someone else, who you hoped might help, if you risk saying something, and the something causes distress, stress, or upset in the other person. There are tears of distress and tears of presence, and they are different. There are prayers … and then there is “I’ll pray for you” as code for “I’m feeling really uncomfortable and helpless, and praying lets me end this encounter and put some distance between us.”

-The decision maker has been through so much for so long already, and is so wrung out emotionally and physically and mentally, that their experience is that there is nothing left of them except broken shards of glass strewn all over the ground. And still the situation goes on and on, with unthinkable decisions having to be thought about and unendurable situations having to be endured. And in that situation, you (the decision maker) start having thoughts that shock you and make you wonder if you are a monster.

It is then that simple presence is life-giving: I am here, I am here, I am here, I will not leave, you can not shock me, you do not need to care for me, I will walk this path all the way to the end with you. When you feel the darkness consuming you, my hand, my human touch, will stay on your shoulder. If you need to say the same uninsightful, seemly minor thing over and over again, to extremely boring lengths, I will be here. I will not leave. If you confess your darkest thoughts, I will not be shocked, but will be able to convey that you are not a monster, just deeply human.

Having said all that, let me admit I’ve never been the primary care giver in a hospice situation. I’ve been on the periphery. And I’ve had to walk through my own difficult situations of other sorts. So I may be off in my perspective of presence during end of life situations.

However, I wonder if the kind of intense presence I described is really purely possible in even good church settings.

The boredom factor: I know that in my situations, there were times where I needed to be really repetitiously boring for long stretches of time – and the fact that my “ministry of presence” was provided by a professional who was receiving pay gave me permission to do so. Even a local church pastor of a small church, although a professional, seems usually too busy for the boring, repetitious stuff. Never mind the average church acquaintance – life has to go on for other people, they are busy, and most people are ill equipped to deal with a situation that doesn’t show measurable progress on a regular basis.

The safety factor: The fact that there were professional boundaries on the relationship made it feel much safer to bring up the “monster” thoughts – if things went badly, I never had to see the person again. Theoretically it is possible that someone in a local church could be a presence for the monster thoughts, but it is something that goes very badly often enough that it is a terrible, stressful thing to risk in a situation where you have no resources left to cope with things going badly.

The shock factor: A specialist professional really had walked the same path with a lot of people and had seen enough that they had worked through their own discomfort and could convey lack of shock at anything I said. They could convey with the conviction of long experience that I wasn’t a monster, just normal and was experiencing something deeply human. In a local church, often the pastor (besides seeming so busy that you never develop the relationship enough to risk saying the monster stuff) seems usually a generalist, and it is a risk on whether they have walked your particular path enough to not be shocked. Same thing with other members of the church community … here may be someone who has walked your exact path and is greatly helpful, but it is hard finding them, especially in the midst of the storm.

The gender factor: I kind of hate to throw this one in here, but my (limited) experience, as a woman, in churches where the pastors and leadership (elders, deacons) were men, is that with them there was always this unspoken stress and tension in the air that seemed to be about “There is a man and a woman in the same room talking about an intense situation which the woman has emotions about; this is dangerous and uncomfortable.” That atmosphere was completely absent with the outside professional.

Of course, optimally it isn’t an either-or answer on whether “the local congregation should handle it” or “the professional should handle it.” Ideally, it is probably a combination of both. I just haven’t actually seen that work out well in practice, much. Maybe I lack perspective or imagination or something.

I know what a relief there is for people when I take them through the rites of confession, or anointing of the sick, or even the prayers for those in their last moments (even if they end up surviving). To have someone there who is willing to acknowledge what they already know (or fear), someone who is willing to acknowledge that life does have an ending (whether now or at some time in the future) is more of a relief than dancing around the subject. Yes, I do believe in the resurrection, but, this life that we are now living does have an ending before the new beginning.

My personal experience is that people who have made it to the point of hospice want to be able to talk and to have someone hear them. But, not simply to hear them, but also to speak back to them the words of the rites that say to them that even now they are not alone that what they are going through is what their fathers, their grandfathers, their great-grandfathers, their ancestors, all went through, and that Mother Church is there to accompany them to the end in this world and to meet them in the next.

It’s good to hear from Chaplain Mike that this is the best approach. But I’m surprised that he thinks it isn’t common among evangelicals – it’s common among those I know. I’m sure there are lots of problems, but maybe his circle of experience isn’t as broad as he assumes.

Still, we all need to grow in this area, and I am thankful to you for posting this interview.

Chaplain Mike, you should think about writing a book.

Thanks, iMonk and Chaplain Mike!